Twitter has acquired Magic Pony Technology, a London-based company that develops machine learning techniques for visual processing.
The financial terms of the deal have not been disclosed. With the acquisition Twitter will strengthen its live video and video streaming content.
With Magic Pony’s technology, Twitter plans to make better-quality video compression, which uses less data and is of better quality.
According to Twitter, machine learning has now become very important as it is powering much of its work. It is making it easier to create, share and discover relevant content for its users.
Twitter says that it has been investing in machine learning with the acquisition of Madbits in 2014 and Whitelab in 2015. Magic Pony’s team will join Twitter Cortex.
Twitter Cortex is a team of engineers, data scientists and machine learning researchers who build new products which can enhance user experiences which can be shared across.
It says that Magic Pony has developed technology based on research in creating algorithms that can understand the features of imagery.
One of the reasons for Twitter to invest in image and video processing machine learning technology is to make it easier for users to upload and watch videos seamlessly even on sloppy mobile networks and Wi-Fi networks.
Magic Pony’s team comprises of 11 PhDs with expertise in computer vision, machine learning, high-performance computing and computational neuroscience.
These team members come from some of the top labs in the world, claims Twitter.
